Midnight at the Chasm
by C.K.isback
Summary: Beatrice Prior is not a saint, but she sure as hell makes me feel like a sinner.


**Well I'm officially on the Peter/Tris boat. I think it might be because I've built up this whole personality and backstory for Peter in my brainthinks. Anyway, hopefully you'll enjoy.**

In my hand, there are two pills. Each is slightly oblong in shape, clear blue plastic-like capsules bulging with liquid. They are small, like pebbles, and feel smooth against the rough, cracked skin of my palm.

It is exactly eight fourteen in the evening, and I am already taking sleeping pills.

I throw them into my mouth and dry swallow them, wincing as I feel each slide down my throat. I linger in the men's bathroom a few more minutes, trying to rid myself of the uncomfortable sensation, but to no avail.

I walk back to the Initiates Dorm, massaging my throat, and I hope I make it there before the pills kick in. They are heavy duty, the highest dosage legal. With them, I could sleep for days. Of course, I can't do that. Not if I want to be Dauntless, not if I want to win this little game of theirs.

The pills finally hit my stomach, and I can already feel my eyelids drooping, my feet dragging against the cement floors. There is no one in the hallways at this time at night. They are all in the dining hall, stuffing themselves like pigs, or out on the town doing their usual, stupidly reckless Dauntless things.

The truth is that I am not Dauntless, nor will I ever be fully Dauntless. The title hangs off of me in a strange, uncomfortable way, like a shirt two sizes too big. But I had to choose one faction, I had to make a name for myself besides that dreadful word, besides 'Factionless'. Factionless is weakness, uncertainty.

I do not fit in because I do not belong in any faction. I do not fit in because of the equally awful moniker I received less than a month ago.

Divergent.

The name is as hard to swallow as sleeping pills.

Dauntless was my choice by default. I am not brave. I am a coward, addicted to sleeping away my problems and operating under the table. But I am even less Amity, with their utterly sickening cheer. Abnegation is akin to death for me, that was never even on the table. And then there is Candor. I had sixteen years of truth, though, and I was ready to not be the only one that tells lies.

Erudite was a close second. I am smart enough, cold enough. But my ADD makes it impossible to sit still at a computer for hours on end, or pore over books late at night. I need motion, I need action.

And so then there was Dauntless. There was the fire, the knife, and my blood. I had to pick it, simply because it was my only option.

My parents were not sad to see me go. I had always been a discomfort to them, they had never really known what to make of me. A child who lies so blatantly, a child who they could not beat the truth out of.

The sleeping pills bring my thoughts to life. I see my father in front of me, staring at me with cold eyes. I look exactly like him. He has my problems, my issues. But he tells only cruelty, only ice cold truth that bites into your brain and sinks its teeth in hard. He chose Candor to deal with his issues, and he expected me to choose it too. But I couldn't. The pain that truth brings did not give me the same satisfaction as the lies that came so willingly to my lips.

My mother stands behind my father. If my father was ice, than she was fire. Not the Dauntless type of fire, the free spirited mask of rebellion. It was a different fire, white-hot and searing.

I feel the sting of a hair brush against my spine, a rolling pin to the back of my head. I carry no scars from her, she was too careful, but that does not mean it didn't happen. It was the one lie she liked to tell, written as unblemished, snow white skin across my body. The happy family, the happy husband. The happy wife and child.

I do not remember my siblings anymore, I am too far gone in the comforts of drowsiness. They appear as pale ghosts behind my eyelids.

I am not going to make it to the dorm. That is apparent.

I am in the shadows of the Pit, against the back wall. I can hear the chasm in my ears, an endless rushing of water. It is loud, pulsating, thundering through my brain. I slump against something cold and slightly slick - the railing.

I do not think about the danger I am potentially in. I let my body slump, so heavy, too heavy, against the railing. My head catches between the bars, and my body twists, slightly suspended, above the water.

The roar is louder now, almost painful. But now I can't move, my body won't let me. I feel like I'm being held down by lead weights, and my breath slows, each one longer than the last. I can feel my mind going, sleep enveloping it, quieting any discomfort, lulling me into peace.

"Peter? Peter, is that you?"

I can hear something - someone - calling me. I can't tell if it's real or fake, manufactured by my mind or someone in the waking world. The darkness is still around me, my body is still unmoving, but I can feel myself coming closer to the verge between sleep and awake. I don't want to get up yet. It's too soon, I'm still so tired, still burnt out. I try to ignore it.

"_Peter. _You have to wake up! Get up!"

Something inside of me snaps, and my eyes are wrenched open.

It is only then that I notice I am upside down, slipping into the chasm. My body is already halfway on the wrong side of the railing, and my face is drenched. The pills had done their job too well. I was about to die.

A scream, so sharp and animalistic that I didn't recognize it as my own, comes from my body. I slip another few inches, until I'm only hanging on by my legs, and I break into a struggle. My hands reach out to grab the rail, but it's too wet. They slide off and my left leg comes down with them.

There is a deafening crack that resounds through my ears as my head smacks hard against the rock of the chasm. A bone-chilling wave of water comes up and drowns me. I accidentally suck down some of the water, feeling it rush straight to my lungs. My eyes bulge, but all I see is black.

So this is it. I am about to die.

Something grabs at my hips, pulling, yanking. It digs into my skin to the point of pain, and I wonder if it is in my mind.

Another wave of water hits me in the face, and I choke down another mouthful.

I am rising, but my mind is falling. A switch has been turned off, and it feels like that hazy moment just before falling asleep. I cannot see anything. I cannot think anything.

Suddenly I feel the warm touch of hands on my face, the feeling of ground against my body. I am not upside down anymore, I can feel that. But I still cannot see, and I still feel drugged out.

"Peter?"

That voice again. It's trying to pull me up and out of sleep, and this time I do not refuse. I answer to my name, struggling to move, to open my eyes.

The face of Beatrice Prior looks back down at me.

I struggle for the words and strength to say something, say anything, but my lungs and stomach are still weighed down with water. I roll over and retch down into the dizzying chasm that I had almost met my death in.

An unsure hand touches lightly against my back in what could be construed as a comforting manner. I turn back around, slumping against the rail.

Tris is still looking at me.

It only occurs to me then that she has just saved my life.

"Are you okay?" she asks me. She does not looked concerned, only nervous and slightly shaken.

I try to gather the strength to speak, but all that comes out is a feeble wheeze. I try again. "W-w-why?" I sound weak, even to my own waterlogged ears. But I am too tired to care. The water has sapped me of my pride.

"Why what?" she asks. But she knows. I can see it in her eyes, in the evasive twitch of her lip. She knows.

After all, I had nearly killed her in this very same spot, in this very same manner. She could have let me drown here, and it would have been logical payback - even to me. But she had saved me. Beatrice Prior was as much Abnegation as I was Candor, and yet she still reached across the railing of the chasm to pull me back up to safety.

She didn't _have_ to. And yet she still did.

I can't speak again, so I just look at her, trying to tell her, hoping she understands.

A slight incline of her chin tells me she knows.

"You must be freezing. Let me help you to the hospital." She stands up, picking me up from under my armpits and helping me to my feet. I feel foolish and weak, like a small child. But I let her see me this way, I have no other choice.

A warm arm wraps around my waist, and I walk alongside her with the strength of a drunken man. Her arm is comforting, for some reason. I've never had someone help me this way before, never had someone touch me like that. Beatrice Prior does not care about me, but that doesn't mean I can't, at least for a moment, pretend.

It is only then that I notice the Pit is still completely deserted, void of all life. The shops are closed, lights off and doors shut. There is no sound except the plod of our footsteps and the rush of the chasm behind us. It is late, very late. Part of me wonders what Tris was doing out so late at night.

I stumble, and my legs buckle underneath me. I hit the floor hard, and she stoops down next to me. "Are you okay?"

I nod, and she makes a move to pull me back up. "W-wait," I say, my mouth summoning the strength to speak on its own accord. "Can I...can I say something first?"

She kneels back down, looking slightly unnerved. "I guess."

"You didn't have to...help me."

She looks slightly affronted by this, pulling away from me. "Well, I'm so sorry, I didn't know you could do it all by _yourself_. Let me just take you back to the chasm and then we'll see-"

"No..no!" I say. "That's not what I meant."

She's silent, lips pursed, eyes cold.

I continue. "I-it's just that you don't like me."

"Yeah, I don't," she cuts in. "At least you have one thing clear."

I nod, head bobbing up and down feebly. "I know. And you shouldn't But...you still helped me."

She says nothing. I look up, but her eyes are focused far away, passively reading the shop signs.

"So I need to say it." I gulped. This was hard for me in more ways than one. "T-thank you."

Her mouth presses into a line, and she looks sideways at me. I never noticed how big her eyes were before, how childlike. "It's okay, Peter. Let's go."

She offers me her hand, and I take it, hoisting myself up. I weigh much more than her, but she still manages to keep a steady stance as I lean heavily against her. She's stronger than I thought.

I'm so cold. The water managed to soak my clothes so that they clung against my body like a second skin. In the chilled night air, it feels even worse. My body inadvertently finds hers, seeking the warmth she possesses.

She stiffens a bit, but does not pull away. Maybe she pities me.

The hospital looms over us, the only building with lights still on, and she turns toward me, facing me with a slightly unnerved expression.

"This is between you and me, okay?" she says. The hand that was guiding me drops to her side, leaving my body even colder.

I nod. "Okay. But I won't forget this Tris." I take a steadying breath, fighting the urge to look away from her. I feel ashamed. "I'm not saying I'm sorry, or that I'll go easy on you, but -"

"It's okay. I get it." A half-smirk curls her lips. "This is still a competition, yeah?"

I swallow, nodding.

"I'm not going in there with you."

"I know, Stiff."

She frowns slightly at the name, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "See you tomorrow Peter."

"Goodnight, Tris."

I do not go into the hospital immediately. Instead, I stand under the stoop, shivering in my soaking clothes, watching Beatrice Prior as she walks away.

A wave of anxiety hits me as I watch her, taking in her every move. I had already thought that I had underestimated the little girl from Abnegation. Turns out I was even more wrong than I had first thought.

She is my opposite in nearly every way, and what's worse is that she makes me question what I am doing. She makes me feel bad about my actions. For the first time, I feel guilty that I am the villain of our story, the one throwing girls over chasm railings, while she is the modest hero that pulls people, regardless of who they were, back up.

Beatrice Prior is not a saint, but she sure as hell makes me feel like a sinner.

I sigh, turning back to the hospital door, my lips blue and teeth chattering. I fish around in my pocket for my bottle of sleeping pills, but find that they must have fallen out when I was clinging on for life over the chasm. It's probably better this way. Now I won't be able to run from my problems.

But without them, I know I sure as hell won't be sleeping tonight.

**Care to review?**


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